Crystal Fighter AKA Roaming Dragon - MOF Multiplayer Online Fighter.
Development on hold until end of 2013. Currently working on Game master driven RPG
Introduction story.
Tekken,Virtua Fighter,Street Fighter 2, and Mortal Kombat have achieved so much success there has been a genre created from them. Roaming Dragon would allow a free 3d movement so at its heart falls into the genre, but it allows battles with more than just two combatants.
The game is action blended in with roleplaying stats. Many games have done this. CastleVania for playstation is a good example. Heck even Zelda had you run around to get extra health and items. The key to keep people interested in a long game is to have a lot of stats that are hard to max out.
It will be online, which will allow people to play multiplayer at home. Online is the new arcade. Arcades are dying and games are moving to online. Sure the connection speed is weak now, but establishing dominance online is critical for a game company to have stake in the future. I started back in 1993 theorizing about online games. The main problem is action vs lag. With specialized(p2p) client/server code, and limiting users to cable modem, you may get lag down to a stable level. Online is both good and bad. If combat won't work with online, the game will not be playable. Update... I am writing the online code now! June 2007. Not only will the latency be 2x as fast as a traditional client/server setup, but it will also support FULL SCALE BATTLES of thousands of players at one time. Well don't get too excited. I said the networking will be able to support thousands, but your computer's video card may become the bottleneck. Still you have to admit, the possibility for a battle for a castle involving 1000 players on each side would have to be exciting, or an open field battle, or a battle on a giant mountain with everyone striving for the top, or even a 1000 player battle in a dungeon...
Its massively multiplayer and quest oriented so theres stuff to do instead of endlessly dueling. Endless duels seem to work for successful side fighter games. Massively multiplayer would be easy to create if online fighting would work. Simply never let more than X players into a hostile zone, where X is the max number of players that can fight before lag takes over. In non hostile, town situations, a little lag never hurt anyone. Large army fights could be split down into smaller fights all running simultaneously. Its actually a boon to split your MMORPG into instanced dungeons because then they don't get overcrowded. Overcrowding is one of the biggest problems facing current MMORPGS. Update June 2007 Since I published this page on my game, most MMORPGS that have come out do have many instanced zones. After experiencing the various ways of instancing: I don't think instancing everything is the way to go though. I think WOW has it right with a moderately sized world and only certain dungeons instanced. Guild Wars with everything instanced makes you feel lonely as you never stumble across others. I have a secret of MMOG game design that I really want to tell, but I'll keep it a secret for my game... So when people experience it, they'll be wowed instead of me spoiling it, and every MMOG and their mom doing it. It's that important. Tell you what: if you hire me as a game designer, I'll tell you the secret.
Includes a kingdom simulator so you can build a castle, and control territory. Like most kingdom simulators, you'd have weekly events(good and bad). You need to use your gold to buy different parts of the castle, and to pay retainer defenders(monsters or players). You'd need to manage your land, and maybe divvy it into smaller for lords to control, and lords manage their land and taxation on local farms. Then people can work a farm like Harvest Moon, but interesting things grow in the garden, and may have to pay taxes to the lord. Overthrowing the king would require an army to challenge the king's army, and battles take outside the castle, breaking into the courtyard, and through the castle itself. Depending on the rooms bought, their location, and the retainer's bought, the instanced battles could be favorable or unfavorable.
Addional Information:
Learn about the martial arts styles.(classes)
The Elemental Chart and mote collection
The Kingdom layout map
Boring Game development Blog. You can read this so you can actually tell that I'm working on this game
The game will also ship with a custom emote maker, so you can make a custom dance, or handshake for instance.
2003-20013 Copyright, James Sager